How to add a custom area in the navigation bar of Dynamics CRM 365

In a recent project for an internal department at Infinite Computing Systems , my team had to implement an end to end application tracking system in Dynamics 365 (CRM).

The first requirement that came from the head of the department was to add a new area in the navigation, instead of using the defaults : Sales, Service and Marketing .

To them, the newly proposed custom entities were not aligned with their process of sales, service or marketing, but rather a process named Consulting

So the problem statement arose : “How to add a custom area in the navigation bar in Dynamics 365”

Solution is to modify the customizations.xml manually or a using a tool

Manual (not recommended way) : The manual way is that you export your solution as a zip file, download & unzip the file, and then edit the customizations.xml . Look out for the section “sitemap” and then add the area as shown in the picture below.

2. Using a tool : Safer approach is to use a tool called xmltoolbox (available on GitHub . It is a recommended tool for doing such operations.